North Korea cuts hotlines with South over leaflet-filled balloons
NORTH KOREA severed all lines of communication with South Korea yesterday, ratcheting up the pressure on Seoul to stop defectors and human rights activists from sending balloons carrying leaflets into the North.
Repeated calls on cross-border liaison and military hotlines went unanswered throughout the day, according to officials at the Unification Ministry and Defence Ministry in Seoul in what now appears to be the most serious challenge to peace on the Korean peninsula since President Moon Jae-in took office in May 2017.
Pyongyang only announced that the lines would be cut yesterday morning, the latest demonstration of the North’s anger at the actions of activists from south of the Demilitarised Zone.
Defectors have released hundreds of balloons carrying more than 500,000 leaflets criticising threats by Kim Jongun to use nuclear weapons against his enemies. Pyongyang has dismissed Seoul’s plans for new laws to halt the release of more balloons carrying leaflets, dollar bills, small amounts of food and memory sticks containing South Korean news programmes as “little more than advanced excuses”.
Among the movies sent into the North was The Interview, the Sony Pictures comedy about a plot to assassinate Kim Jong-un. The movie so infuriated the regime in 2014 that its hackers accessed the company’s records and released confidential data and movies that were due to be released over the coming months.
South Korea announced on Friday that it would pass new legislation to stop the releases, just hours after North Korea had initially protested.
State media there has released images of clenched-fist students and workers protesting against “human scum” for “slandering the supreme leadership” of North Korea, insisting that it is “necessary to mercilessly punish the defectors to the last man”.
At a demonstration over the weekend, thousands of protesters declared that they would “prepare themselves to be human bombs for the party”.
The South Korean government’s proposal to ban the balloon releases has been widely criticised there, with an editorial in the Chosun Ilbo newspaper describing the administration of Mr Moon Jae-in as “North Korea’s puppet”.